Motivation in School ECCLES

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The Development of Children's Motivation in School Contexts Author(s): Allan Wigfield, Jacquelynne S. Eccles and Daniel Rodriguez Source: Review of Research in Education, Vol. 23 (1998), pp. 73-118Published by: American Educational Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1167288Accessed: 30-03-2015 20:34 UTC

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Chapter 3

The Development of Children's Motivation in School Contexts

ALLAN WIGFIELD University of Maryland

JACQUELYNNE S. ECCLES University of Michigan

DANIEL RODRIGUEZ University of Maryland

OVERVIEW Research on student motivation has burgeoned in the last 20 years. We have

learned much about the nature of students' motivation, how it develops, how it relates to students' school performance, and how it is influenced by different teacher practices, classroom environments, and school environments (for reviews of the research on motivation, see Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998; Pintrich & Schunk, 1996). Very broadly, motivation theorists are interested in the "whys" of human behavior: what moves people to act (see Weiner, 1992). In terms of school performance, researchers studying school motivation look at factors such as the choices students make about which academic activities to do, their persistence in continuing the activities, and the degree of effort they expend.

But what determines individuals' choices, effort, and persistence at different academic activities? Over the last 25 years, many motivation researchers have focused on students' self-perceptions and interests and on how their self-perceptions and interests regulate their achievement behaviors, such as choice, persistence, and performance (Eccles et al., 1998; Pintrich & Schunk, 1996; Renninger, Hidi, & Krapp, 1992; Schunk & Meece, 1992; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994). Because of this emphasis on self variables, much of the research on motivation has focused on motivation as a characteristic of the individual. However, there has been increasing recognition of the importance of social influences on learning and motivation (Eccles et al., 1998; Marshall, 1992; McCaslin & Good, 1996).

Indeed, many researchers and theorists now posit that learning is an inherently social activity (Marshall, 1992; McCaslin & Good, 1996; Shuell, 1996; Vygotsky,

The writing of this chapter was supported in part by a grant from the Spencer Foundation to Allan Wigfield and by Grant HD17553 from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development to Jacquelynne S. Eccles, Allan Wigfield, Phyllis Blumenfeld, and Rena Harold. The views expressed are solely the responsibility of the authors.

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74 Review of Research in Education, 23

1978). Learning in classrooms is not done in isolation; instead, it occurs in the context of relationships with teachers and peers (Webb & Palincsar, 1996). These relationships, along with the different roles that emerge for students and teachers in various classrooms, strongly influence how students learn. Furthermore, opportunities for social interactions around learning have been shown to improve children's achievement in reading and other areas (e.g., Guthrie et al., 1996; Slavin, 1996). This more social conceptualization of learning has important implications for conceptualizations of motivation (see Hickey, 1997) and how children's motivation develops. It is increasingly clear that the social organization of classrooms and schools, and children's interactions with peers and teachers, have major influences on students' motivation (Eccles et al., 1998; Juvonen & Wentzel, 1996; Maehr & Midgley, 1996; Ryan & Stiller, 1991).

In this chapter, we discuss how the social organization of classrooms and group processes in classrooms influence student motivation. We begin the chapter with a review of some of the crucial constructs prevalent in current motivation theory and discuss how children's motivation develops during the school years. Because of space limitations, our review of these topics is relatively brief. More detailed reviews of this work can be found in Eccles et al. (1998), Pintrich and Schunk (1996), and Weiner (1992). We then discuss the influence of different social organizations of classrooms on students' motivation, focusing especially on teacher practices and classroom structure and how they influence motivation. To comple- ment the section on the development of motivation, we next discuss how school structures change as children move from elementary into secondary school and how such changes affect students' motivation. Finally, we consider the peer group and motivation. It is important to note at the outset that, in this chapter, we consider motivation in two fundamental ways. In the first section, we focus on how motivation influences students' behaviors; thus, motivation is the causal variable. In the sections on socialization, we focus on factors that influence motivation; thus, motivation as an outcome is considered.

THE NATURE OF STUDENT MOTIVATION Researchers now have assessed many different constructs that are crucial as-

pects of students' motivation. To organize our discussion of these constructs, we separate them into two broad groups (see also Eccles et al., 1998). One set involves self-perception constructs that include individuals' sense of their competence and agency to achieve different outcomes. Another set concerns the purposes individuals have for engaging in different activities and their interest in and valuing of the activities. We begin with the first set of constructs.

Individuals' Sense of Competence and Control

Ability and Efficacy Beliefs

Many researchers interested in motivation (e.g., Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997; Eccles et al., 1983; Nicholls, 1984, 1990; Wigfield, 1994) focus on students' beliefs about their ability and efficacy to perform achievement tasks as crucial mo-



Wigfield, Eccles, and Rodriguez: Children's Motivation 75

tivational mediators of achievement behavior. Ability beliefs are children's evaluations of their competence in different areas. Researchers have documented that children's and adolescents' ability beliefs relate to and predict their performance in different achievement domains such as math and reading, even when previous performance is controlled (e.g., Eccles et al., 1983; Meece, Wigfield, & Eccles, 1990; Nicholls, 1979a). A construct related to individuals' ability beliefs is their expectancies for success. Expectancies refer to children's sense of how well they will do on an upcoming task, instead of their general belief of how good they are at the task (see Stipek, 1984). These beliefs also predict children's performance on different tasks; when children think they can accomplish a task, they are more likely to do so.

Bandura's (1977, 1997) construct of self-efficacy also deals with individuals' expectancies about being able to do tasks; however, Bandura defined self-efficacy as a generative capacity in which different subskills are organized into courses of action (see also Schunk, 1991). Bandura (1977) proposed that individuals' efficacy expectations for different achievement tasks are a major determinant of activity choice, willingness to expend effort, and persistence (see also Bandura, 1997). In work with school-aged children, Schunk and his colleagues (see Schunk, 1991, for a review) have clearly demonstrated that students' sense of efficacy relates to their academic performance (see also Zimmerman, Bandura, & Martinez-Pons, 1992). They also have shown that training students both to be more efficacious and to believe they are more efficacious improves their achievement in different subject areas such as math and reading.

Researchers interested in competence and efficacy beliefs currently are debating the similarities and differences between these belief constructs (see Pajares, 1996). This debate will provide important definitional clarity to these constructs. How- ever, for our purposes, the general conclusion from this work is that when individuals have a positive sense of their ability and efficacy to do a task, they are more likely to choose to do the task, persist at it, and maintain their effort. Efficacy and competence beliefs predict future performance and engagement even when previous performance is taken into account.

Control and Autonomy Beliefs Researchers interested in individuals' control beliefs initially made a major

distinction between internal and external locus of control (e.g., Crandall, Katkovsky, & Crandall, 1965; Rotter, 1954). Internal control means the individual believes that he or she controls the outcome; external control means the outcome is determined by other things. Researchers have confirmed the positive association between internal locus of control and academic achievement (see Findley & Cooper, 1983) and elaborated broader conceptual models of control (e.g., Connell, 1985; Weiner, 1979, 1985). Connell (1985), for example, added unknown control as a third control belief category and argued that younger children are particularly likely to use this category. Weiner included locus of control as one of the crucial dimensions in his attribution theory. Skinner (1995) defined several kinds of perceived control beliefs and emphasized the importance of perceived contingency




between individuals' actions and their success for developing positive motivation.

Connell and Wellborn (1991) integrated control beliefs into a broader theoretical framework based on the psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness (see also Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan, 1992; Ryan & Stiller, 1991). They linked control beliefs to competence needs: Children who believe they control their achievement outcomes should feel more competent. They hypothesized that the extent to which these needs are fulfilled is influenced by the following contextual characteristics: amount of structure, degree of autonomy provided, and level of involvement in the children's activities. When the family, peer, and school contexts support children's autonomy, develop their competence, and provide positive relations with others, children's motivation (which Connell and Wellborn conceptualized as engagement) will be positive, and they will become fully engaged in different activities such as schoolwork. When one or more of the needs are not fulfilled, children will become disaffected (see Connell, Spencer, & Aber, 1994; Skinner & Belmont, 1993). This theory is especially relevant to this chapter because of the focus on relatedness as something that influences engagement in achievement activities. We return to it in the sections on how relations with teachers and peers influence motivation.

Individuals' Intrinsic Motivation, Interests, Values, and Goals Although theories dealing with competence, expectancy, and control beliefs

provide powerful explanations of individuals' performance on different kinds of achievement activities, these theories do not systematically address another important motivational question: Does the individual want to do the task? Even if people are certain they can do a task and think they can control the outcome, they may not want to engage in it. Once the decision is made to engage in a task or activity, there are different reasons for doing so. The constructs discussed next focus on these aspects of motivation.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation A basic distinction in the motivation literature is between intrinsic motivation

and extrinsic motivation (see Deci & Ryan, 1985; Harter, 1981). When individuals are intrinsically motivated, they engage in activities for their own sake and out of interest in the activity. Csikszentmihalyi's (1988) notion of "flow" may represent the ultimate form of intrinsic motivation. He described flow as feelings of being immersed and carried by an activity, as well as feeling in control of one's actions and the surrounding environment. Flow is possible only when people feel that the opportunities for action in a given situation match their ability to master the challenges. By contrast, when extrinsically motivated, individuals engage in activities for instrumental or other reasons, such as receiving a reward.

Deci, Ryan, and their colleagues (e.g., Deci, Vallerand, Pelletier, & Ryan, 1991) went beyond the extrinsic-intrinsic motivation dichotomy in their discussion of internalization, the process of transferring the regulation of behavior from outside to inside the individual. They defined several levels in the process of moving from




external to more internalized regulation: external (regulation coming from outside the individual), introjected (internal regulation based on the individual's feelings that he or she should or has to engage in the behavior), identified (internal regulation of behavior that is based on the utility of that behavior, such as studying hard to get into college), and, finally, integrated (regulation based on what the individual thinks is valuable and important). Even though the integrated level is self-determined, it does not reflect intrinsically motivated behavior (Deci, 1992). Intrinsic motivation occurs only when the individual is interested in the behavior, which may not be the case even at the integrated level of regulation.

Ryan and Stiller (1991) also argued against the simple intrinsic-extrinsic dichotomy. Like Connell and Wellborn (1991), they focused on the importance of engagement in learning as a crucial motivational construct. They also argued that students are more likely to be engaged when they have internalized a value for learning. When students have internalized values for learning, they will engage themselves in learning tasks and activities, even if the activities are not of particular interest to them. Thus, these internalized values are crucial to student engagement. We return later to aspects of classroom social structures that promote or inhibit student engagement.

Interest A construct closely related to the notion of intrinsic motivation is interest (see

Alexander, Kulikowich, & Jetton, 1994; Hidi, 1990; Krapp, Hidi, & Renninger, 1992; Renninger & Wozniak, 1985; Schiefele, 1991, 1996a, 1996b; Tobias, 1994). Researchers studying interest differentiate between individual and situational interest. As the label implies, individual or personal interest is a characteristic of the individual, and it is conceptualized as either a relatively stable disposition or an active state. In discussing what individual interest consists of, Renninger (1990) suggested that it includes both knowledge and value about a topic or object. By contrast, situational interest stems from conditions in the environment (see Krapp et al., 1992). Krapp et al. argued that situational interest generates curiosity, lead-

ing individuals to explore the topic further. Individuals' personal interests have important implications for their subsequent

activity (see Renninger, 1990). Much of the research on individual interest has focused on its relation to quality of learning (see Alexander et al., 1994; Renninger, Hidi, & Krapp, 1992; Schiefele, 1996a). In general, there are significant but moderate relations between interest and text learning. More important, interest is more strongly related to indicators of deep-level learning, such as recall of main ideas, coherence of recall, responding to deeper comprehension questions, and representation of meaning, than it is to surface-level learning, such as responding to simple questions or verbatim representation of text (Schiefele, 1996a; Schiefele & Krapp, in press).

Researchers studying situational interest have focused on the characteristics of academic tasks that create interest (e.g., Anderson, Shirey, Wilson, & Fielding, 1987; Hidi & Baird, 1986, 1988; Teigen, 1987). Among others, several text features have been found to arouse situational interest: personal relevance, novelty, activity level, and comprehensibility (Hidi & Baird, 1986). Empirical evidence has




provided strong support for the relation between situational interest and text comprehension and recall (see reviews by Schiefele, 1996b; Wade, 1992). Further- more, Hidi and Berndorff (1996) have argued that situational interest can lead to individual interest and intrinsic motivation. This point is a crucial one for this chapter; features of activities that individuals do in school can increase their personal interest in the activities.

Although interest is a powerful motivator, Deci (1992) noted that not all motivated behavior reflects interest. Individuals often do things that are not necessarily of interest to them but have other purposes. This brings us to the notions of (a) subjective valuing of activities and (b) achievement goals.

Individuals' Subjective Task Values Eccles and her colleagues have defined different ways in which individuals can

value activities such as schoolwork (see Eccles et al., 1983; Wigfield & Eccles, 1992). Eccles et al. (1983) outlined four motivational components of task value: attainment value, intrinsic value, utility value, and cost. They defined attainment value as the personal importance of doing well on the task. Drawing on self-schema and identity theories (e.g., Markus & Wurf, 1987), they also linked attainment value to the relevance of engaging in a task for confirming or disconfirming salient aspects of one's self-schema. That is, because tasks provide the opportunity to demonstrate aspects of one's actual or ideal self-schema, such as masculinity, femi- ninity, and/or competence in various domains, tasks will have higher attainment value to the extent that they allow the individual to confirm salient aspects of these self-schemata (see Eccles, 1984, 1987).

Intrinsic value is the enjoyment the individual gets from performing the activity. This component of value is similar to the construct of intrinsic motivation, as defined by Harter (1981) and by Deci and his colleagues (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan, Connell, & Deci, 1985), and to the constructs of interest and flow, as defined by Csikszentmihalyi (1988), Renninger (1990), and Schiefele (1991).

Utility value is determined by how well a task relates to current and future goals, such as career goals. A task can have positive value to a person because it facili- tates important future goals, even if he or she is not interested in the task for its own sake. For instance, students often take classes that they do not particularly enjoy but that they need in order to pursue other interests, to please their parents, or to be with their friends. In one sense, then, this component captures the more "extrinsic" reasons for engaging in a task. But it also relates directly to individuals' internalized short- and long-term goals.

Finally, Eccles and her colleagues identified "cost" as a critical component of value (Eccles, 1987; Eccles et al., 1983). Cost is conceptualized in terms of the negative aspects of engaging in the task, such as performance anxiety and fear of both failure and success, as well as the amount of effort that is needed to succeed and the lost opportunities that result from making one choice rather than another.

Eccles and her colleagues have found that individuals' task values predict course plans and enrollment decisions in mathematics, physics, and English and involvement in sport activities, even after prior performance levels have been controlled




(Eccles et al., 1983, 1995; Eccles, Adler, & Meece, 1984; Eccles & Harold, 1991; Meece et al., 1990). They have also shown that both expectancies and values predict career choices (see Eccles, 1994).

Achievement Goal Orientations Recently, researchers have become interested in children's achievement goals

and their relation to achievement behavior (see Ames & Ames, 1989; Meece, 1991, 1994). Several different approaches have emerged. Bandura (1986) and Schunk (1990, 1991) focus on goals' proximity, specificity, and level of challenge and have shown that specific, proximal, and somewhat challenging goals promote both self-efficacy and improved performance. Other researchers have defined and in- vestigated broader goal orientations (e.g., Ames, 1992a, 1992b; Blumenfeld, 1992; Butler, 1993; Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Nicholls, 1984). For example, Nicholls and his colleagues (e.g., Nicholls, 1979b; Nicholls, Cobb, Yackel, Wood, & Wheatley, 1990) defined two major kinds of motivationally relevant goal patterns or orientations: ego-involved goals and task-involved goals. Individuals with ego-involved goals seek to maximize favorable evaluations of their competence and minimize negative evaluations of competence. Questions such as "Will I look smart?" and "Can I outperform others?" reflect ego-involved goals. In contrast, with task-involved goals, individuals focus on mastering tasks and increasing their competence. Questions such as "How can I do this task?" and "What will I learn?" reflect task-involved goals. Nicholls also discussed a third type of goal orientation: work avoidance. As its label suggests, work avoidance refers to attempting to do as little academic work as possible in school.

Dweck and her colleagues provided a complementary analysis (e.g., Dweck & Elliott, 1983; Dweck & Leggett, 1988) distinguishing between performance goals (like ego-involved goals) and learning goals (like task-involved goals). Similarly, Ames (1992b) distinguished between the association of performance goals (like ego-involved goals) and mastery goals (like task-focused goals) with both performance and task choice. With ego-involved (or performance) goals, children try to outperform others, and they are more likely to engage in tasks they know they can do. Task-involved (or mastery-oriented) children choose challenging tasks and are more concerned with their own progress than with outperforming others.

Goal theories are currently very popular among researchers interested in both the determinants of performance and task choice (e.g., Butler, 1989a, 1989b) and the restructuring of schools to enhance motivation (e.g., Ames, 1992a; Maehr & Midgley, 1996). By and large, consistent support for the benefits of task-involved or learning goals is emerging. However, the categorization of children's goals as ego or task involved oversimplifies the complexity of motivation. Researchers are broadening notions of achievement goal orientations in important ways. As mentioned earlier, Nicholls, Cheung, Lauer, and Patashnick (1989) defined another important goal orientation, work avoidance, which unfortunately may characterize many students' motivation. In a somewhat similar vein, Elliott and Harackiewicz (1996) discussed how students' performance goals can lead them to either approach




achievement situations or avoid such situations. This focus on avoidance motivation is an important new direction in the work on achievement goals.

Another important issue regarding goals concerns their domain specificity versus generality. Some researchers study students' goal orientations for specific domains; for instance, Meece (1991, 1994) studied students' goals for science. Other researchers have argued that students' goal orientations are more general. Duda and Nicholls (1992) found that students' goal orientations toward sport and academics formed factors that bridged the two domains. That is, the mastery goal orientation factor emerging in their analyses included items from both sport and academic domains. By contrast, students' perceived competence was more domain specific. Duda and Nicholls concluded that students' goal orientations appear to be quite general, at least across the domains they studied. Stipek and Gralinski (1996) provided further evidence that students' goal orientations generalize across different academic subject areas. More research is needed on the domain specificity or generality of students' goal orientations.

There is a growing body of research on how different classroom organizational characteristics influence children's goal orientations; we discuss that work later.

Multiple Goal Perspectives Researchers including Ford (1992) and Wentzel (1991b) have adopted a more

complex perspective on goals and motivation, arguing that there are many different kinds of goals individuals can have in school settings. For example, Wentzel (e.g., Wentzel, 1991a, 1993, 1996) has examined the multiple goals of adolescents in school settings. Wentzel's view on goals differs from the views of theorists such as Dweck and Nicholls in that she focuses on the content of children's goals to guide and direct behavior rather than the criteria a person uses to define success or failure (i.e., mastery vs. performance). In this sense, Wentzel's goals are like the goals and self-schemas that relate to attainment value hierarchies in the Eccles et al. expectancy value model.

Wentzel has focused on both academic and social goals as being important predictors of children's achievement (see Wentzel, 1996). She makes the important point that children's academic motivation is not the only motivational predictor of school performance; children's social motivation must be considered as well (see also Goodenow, 1993; Urdan & Maehr, 1995; Wentzel & Wigfield, in press). Wentzel (1989) found that the goals related to school achievement include seeing oneself as successful, dependable, wanting to learn new things, and wanting to get things done. Higher achieving students have higher levels of social responsibility and higher achievement goals than lower achieving students (for a review, see Wentzel, 1991a, 1991b). Similarly, Wentzel (1994) documented the association among middle school children's prosocial goals of helping others, academic prosocial goals such as sharing learning with classmates, peer social responsibility goals such as following through on promises made to peers, and academic social responsibility goals such as doing what the teacher says to do. Prosocial goals (particularly academic prosocial goals) related positively to peer acceptance. In- terestingly, academic responsibility goals related negatively to peer acceptance but




positively to acceptance by teachers. Furthermore, positive prosocial and academic

goals related positively to prosocial behaviors (as rated by teachers) and negatively to irresponsible behaviors. And, finally, the pursuit of positive social goals was facilitated by perceived support from teachers and peers. Like Connell and Wellborn's (1991) discussion of relatedness, this work is central to this chapter because of its focus on links between social and academic aspects of motivation.

In further work on this topic, Patrick, Hicks, and Ryan (1997) assessed relations of middle-school students' academic self-efficacy, social self-efficacy, and social goals. They found that students' academic and social self-efficacy with peers and teachers were related. Children's endorsement of responsibility goals was related to their sense of efficacy in relating to their teacher. Furthermore, children's social self-efficacy and social goals predicted their academic self-efficacy. These results provide further support for the notion that social aspects of motivation are important not only in terms of children's relations with teachers and peers but also for their academic motivation and achievement.

To conclude this section, researchers have identified a number of important constructs that are part of students' motivation. We have discussed these constructs sepa- rately, and, indeed, much of the research on these motivational constructs has focused on just one (or at most two) of the constructs. Yet the constructs are related, and increasingly researchers are examining links among them. For instance, we now know that competence beliefs, achievement values, and intrinsic motivation relate positively to one another (Eccles & Wigfield, 1995; Harter & Connell, 1984; Ryan & Stiller, 1991). Thus, when children think they are competent, they are more likely to be motivated for intrinsic reasons. Furthermore, positive competence beliefs, more intrinsic motivations, and learning goals lead to greater persistence, choices of more challenging activities, and higher levels of engagement in different activities (Ames, 1992b; Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Pintrich & De Groot, 1990). Similarly, having positive efficacy beliefs fosters setting more challenging goals (Schunk, 1991). These links need to be studied further in future research.

Regulating Achievement Outcomes: Self-Regulation and Co-Regulation

Motivation theorists also study the specific ways children regulate their behavior to meet their goals (e.g., see Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994). Some have suggested links between motivational beliefs and the use of particular cognitive strategies (e.g., Alexander et al., 1994; Pintrich, Marx, & Boyle, 1993). Kuhl (1987) and Corno and Kanfer (1993) argued for the distinction between motivation and volition, with motivation guiding decisions about engaging in particular activities and volition guiding the behaviors used to attain the goal. Broadly, these theorists focus on two issues: how motivation is translated into regulated behavior and how motivation and cognition are linked.

Reviewing the extensive literature on the self-regulation of behavior is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Borkowski, Carr, Rellinger, & Pressley, 1990; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994). We briefly focus on the work of Zimmerman, Schunk, and their colleagues, because they directly link motivation to self-regulation. Zimmerman




(1989) described self-regulated students as being metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active in their own learning processes and in achieving their own goals. Following Bandura (1986), Zimmerman posited reciprocally related personal, environmental, and behavioral determinants of self-regulated learning that allow individuals to control the extent to which they are self-regulated through personal and behavioral actions and choices. However, he also acknowledged that context is important in that some environments vary in how much latitude for choice of activities or approaches is afforded.

According to Zimmerman (1989), self-regulated learners have three important characteristics. First, they use a variety of self-regulated strategies (active learning processes that involve agency and purpose). Second, self-regulated students believe they can perform efficaciously. Third, self-regulated students set numerous and varied goals for themselves. Furthermore, self-regulated learners engage in three important processes: self-observation (monitoring of one's activities), self-judgment (evaluation of how well one's performance compares with a stan- dard or with the performance of others), and self-reactions (reactions to performance outcomes). When these reactions are favorable, particularly in response to failure, students are more likely to persist. As proposed by attribution theorists, the favorableness of people's reaction to failure is determined by how they interpret their difficulties and failures. Zimmerman and Bonner (in press) discuss the advan- tages of attributing difficulties to ineffective strategy use rather than to a more general attribution of not trying.

In discussing self-efficacy and self-regulation, Schunk (1994) emphasized the interactive and synergistic relations among goal setting, self-evaluation, and self-efficacy. He has discussed goals in two ways. Initially, he argued and demonstrated that when goals are proximal, specific, and challenging, they are most effective in motivating children's behavior and increasing their sense of self-efficacy (Schunk, 1990, 1991). Schunk (1994) also discussed how self-efficacy might be influenced by the learning and performance goal types discussed earlier, suggesting that self-efficacy should be higher under learning than under performance goals; some research supports this claim (e.g., Elliott & Dweck, 1988; Meece, Blumenfeld, & Hoyle, 1988).

In contrast to the focus on self-regulation, McCaslin and Good (1996) recently proposed the term co-regulation as a way to socially situate the learner. They described co-regulation as "the process by which the social/instructional environment supports or scaffolds the individual via her relationships within the classroom, relationships with teachers and peers, objects and setting, and ultimately, the self. Internalization of these supportive relationships empowers the individual to seek new challenges within co-regulated support" (p. 660). McCaslin and Good stated that although self-regulation may be the ultimate goal for learning, co-regulation is necessary to reach that goal. Teachers and other students must provide support and motivation in order for any given student to learn (see also Goodenow, 1993). McCaslin and Good described the following as being crucial in co-regulation: opportunities made available in different classrooms, the kinds of tasks presented to students and the amount of choice allowed in them, the kinds of




goals students have, and students' own self-evaluations. The crucial point for our

purposes is again the recognition of the social nature of learning and how interactions with others are critical to students' motivation and achievement.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MOTIVATION The motivation constructs discussed in the previous sections undergo important

changes during childhood and adolescence; these changes are the focus of this section. A major reason for discussing the research on these changes is that this information is crucial for understanding how group processes and the social organizations of classrooms influence students' motivation. For instance, classroom practices such as ability grouping probably affect younger and older students' self-evaluations differently, in part because younger and older children have differ- ing conceptions of their ability.

The Development of Competence-Related Beliefs

Developmental theorists such as Harter (1983) proposed that children begin with broad understandings of whether they are "smart" or "dumb" that later develop into a more fine-grained and differentiated understanding of their competencies across different activities. Researchers examining this hypothesis with factor-analytic approaches have found that even very young elementary school children dis- tinguish among their self-perceptions of competence in different domains (e.g., Eccles, Wigfield, Harold, & Blumenfeld, 1993; Harter, 1982; Marsh & Hocevar, 1985). For example, Eccles et al. (1993) and Marsh and his colleagues (Marsh, Barnes, Cairns, & Tidman, 1984; Marsh, Craven, & Debus, 1991) demonstrated that even kindergarten and first-grade children's beliefs about their competencies are clearly differentiated across many different domains, including math, reading, music, sports, general school ability, physical appearance, and both peer and parent relations.

Another kind of change in children's competence-related beliefs is that their levels on different tasks decline across the elementary school years and into the middle school years (see Dweck & Elliott, 1983; Eccles & Midgley, 1989; Stipek & Mac Iver, 1989; Wigfield, Eccles, Mac Iver, Reuman, & Midgley, 1991). To illustrate, Nicholls (1979a) found that most first graders ranked themselves near the top of the class in reading ability, and there was no correlation between their ability ratings and their performance level. In contrast, 12-year-olds' ratings were more dispersed and correlated highly with school grades (.70 or higher). Similar results have emerged in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of children's competence beliefs in a variety of academic and nonacademic domains (e.g., Eccles et al. 1993; Marsh, 1989; Wigfield et al., 1997). These declines, particularly for math, often continue into and through secondary school (Eccles et al., 1983, 1989; Wigfield et al., 1991).

Expectancies for success also decrease during the elementary school years. In most laboratory-type studies, 4- and 5-year-old children expect to do quite well on specific tasks, even after repeated failure (e.g., Parsons & Ruble, 1977; Stipek, 1984). Stipek (1984) argued that young children's optimistic expectancies may reflect hoped-for outcomes rather than real expectations; in addition, Parsons and




Ruble (1977) suggested that, since young children's skills do improve rapidly, high expectancies for future success may be based on experience (see also Dweck & Elliott, 1983). Across the elementary school years, however, children's expectancies for success become more sensitive to both success and failure experiences and more accurate or realistic in terms of their relation to actual performance history (see Eccles, Midgley, & Adler, 1984; Parsons & Ruble, 1977; Stipek, 1984).1

The declines in children's competence-related beliefs have been explained in two main ways. First, children become much better at understanding, interpreting, and integrating the evaluative feedback they receive, and they engage in more social comparison with their peers; this leads them to become more accurate or realistic in their self-assessments, which means that some children will see themselves as being less competent (see Dweck & Elliott, 1983; Nicholls, 1984; Ruble, 1983; Stipek & Mac Iver, 1989). Indeed, researchers have found that children's competence beliefs relate more closely to their performance as they get older (e.g., Nicholls, 1979a; Wigfield et al., 1997).

Second, because school environments change in ways that make evaluation more salient and competition between students more likely, some children's self-assessments will decline as they get older (e.g., see Blumenfeld, Pintrich, Meece, "& Wessels, 1982; Eccles & Midgley, 1989; Eccles, Midgley, & Adler, 1984; Stipek "& Daniels, 1988). We return to these points later, especially the point about changes in school environments, because it deals directly with how the social organization of schools influences motivation.

Interestingly, children's self-efficacy beliefs appear to increase rather than decrease. Shell, Colvin, and Bruning (1995) found that 4th graders had lower self-efficacy beliefs for reading and writing than did 7th and 10th graders, and the 7th graders' efficacy beliefs were lower than 10th graders' beliefs (see Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1990, for similar findings). The inconsistency in the findings regarding self-efficacy and competence beliefs probably reflects measurement differences. Shell et al. measured children's estimates of their efficacy on specific reading and writing skills, which should be higher among older children. Measures of competence beliefs tend to be more general (see Pajares, 1996).

Development of Control and Agency Beliefs During middle childhood and beyond, there appears to be an increase in percep-

tions of internal control as children get older (see Skinner & Connell, 1986). However, based on a series of studies of children's understanding of skill versus chance events, Weisz (1984) concluded that the developmental sequence is more complex. The kindergarten children in these studies believed that outcomes of chance tasks were due to effort, whereas the oldest groups (eighth graders and college students) believed that such outcomes were due to chance; fourth graders were confused about the distinction. Thus, in this work, the youngest children had strong internal control beliefs, so strong, in fact, that they believed in internal control over outcomes even when none was possible, suggesting that with age children came to understand better which kinds of events they can and cannot control. Similarly,




Connell (1985) found a decrease in the endorsement of all three of his locus of control constructs (internal control, control by powerful others, and unknown control) from Grades 3 through 9. The findings regarding unknown control beliefs suggest that older children have a clearer understanding of what controls their achievement outcomes than do younger children. However, the older children rated the other two sources of control as less important as well.

Skinner (1990, 1995) emphasized the importance of success itself for developing positive control beliefs and discussed how children's understanding of causal- ity and explanations for outcomes change over age. She found that the structure of children's control beliefs became more complex as children got older. Like Connell (1985), she also found that beliefs about unknown control and powerful others decreased across age levels.

Development of Interest and Intrinsic Motivation Travers (1978) suggested that only "universal" interests would be evident in

very young children (e.g., the search for structure). Later, children's interests should become more differentiated and individualized. Roe and Siegelman (1964) proposed that the earliest differentiation occurs between interest in the world of physical objects and interest in the world of people. Todt (1990) argued that this early differentiation eventually leads to individual differences in interests in the social versus the natural sciences.

A second major change in children's interests, occurring between 3 and 8 years of age, regards the formation of gender-specific interests. According to Kohlberg (1966), the acquisition of gender identity leads to gender-specific behaviors, attitudes, and interests. Children strive to behave consistently with their gender identity and, thus, evaluate activities or objects consistent with their gender identity more positively than other activities or objects. As a consequence, boys and girls develop gender-role-stereotyped interests (see Eccles, 1987; Renninger & Wozniak, 1985; Ruble & Martin, 1998). For instance, Wigfield et al. (1997) found that elementary-school-aged girls were more interested in instrumental music and reading than were boys, whereas boys were more interested in sports than were girls.

As is the case with children's competence beliefs, children's academic intrinsic motivation and interest have been found to decline across the school years; these results have occurred in studies of European and American children, and such decreases are especially true for the natural sciences and mathematics (e.g., Eccles et al., 1993; Harter, 1981; Hedelin & Sjoberg, 1989; Helmke, 1993; Lehrke, Hoffmann, & Gardner, 1985; Wigfield et al., 1997) and during the early adolescent years. Pekrun (1993) found that intrinsic motivation stabilized after eighth grade.

Baumert (1995) argued that the decline in school-related interests during adolescence reflects a more general developmental process in which adolescents discover new fields of experience that lead to new interests and reduce the dominant influence of school. In contrast, other researchers have suggested that changes in a number of instructional variables, such as clarity of presentation, monitoring of




what happens in the classroom, supportive behavior, cognitively stimulating experiences, self-concept of the teacher (e.g., educator vs. scientist), and achievement pressure, may contribute to declining interest in school mathematics and science (e.g., Eccles & Midgley, 1989).

Development of Subjective Task Values Eccles, Wigfield, and their colleagues examined age-related changes in both the

structure and mean levels of children's valuing of different activities. In Eccles et al. (1993), Eccles and Wigfield (1995), and Wigfield et al. (1997), children's competence-expectancy beliefs and subjective values within the domains of math, reading, and sports formed distinct factors at all grade levels. Thus, even during the very early elementary grades, children appear to have distinct beliefs about what they are good at and what they value. The distinctions among the importance, utility, and interest components of subjective task value appear to differentiate more gradu- ally (Eccles et al., 1993; Eccles & Wigfield, 1995). Children in the early elementary grades differentiate task value into two components: interest and utility/importance. In contrast, children in Grades 5 through 12 differentiate task value into the three major subcomponents (attainment value/personal importance, interest, and utility value) outlined by Eccles et al. (1983). These results suggest that the interest component differentiates out first, followed later by the distinction between utility and attainment value.

As with competence-related beliefs, researchers generally find age-related declines in children's valuing of certain academic tasks (e.g., Eccles et al., 1983, 1993; see Eccles & Midgley, 1989; Wigfield & Eccles, 1992). For instance, Wigfield et al. (1997) found that children's beliefs about the usefulness and importance of math, reading, instrumental music, and sports activities decreased over time. In contrast, the children's interest decreased only for reading and instrumental music (not for either math or sports). The decline in valuing of math continues through high school (Eccles et al., 1983). Eccles et al. (1989) and Wigfield et al. (1991) also found that children's ratings of both the importance of math and English and their liking of these school subjects decreased across the transition to junior high school. In math, students' importance ratings continued to decline in seventh grade, whereas their importance ratings of English increased somewhat during seventh grade.

Development of Children's Goals There has been little work on how children's goals develop. Although Nicholls

documented that both task goals and ego goals are evident by second grade (Nicholls et al., 1989, 1990), he also suggested that an ego goal orientation becomes more prominent for many children as they get older as a result of both developmental changes in their conceptions of ability and systematic changes in school context. Dweck and her colleagues (e.g., Dweck & Leggett, 1988) also predicted that, as they get older, children are more likely to adopt performance goals as they come




to view intelligence as stable (entity view), because an entity view of intelligence is linked to performance goals. Recently, Meece and Miller (1996) found that, in the third and fourth grades, children's learning and performance goals decreased, and their work avoidance goals increased. More work charting the development of children's goal orientations is needed.

The relations of goals to performance should also change with age as the

meaning of ability and effort change and as the social conditions under which tasks are performed change. In a series of studies examining how competitive and noncompetitive conditions, along with task and ego-focused conditions, influence preschool-aged and elementary-school-aged children's interests, motivation, and self-evaluations, Butler identified several

developmental changes. First, competition decreased children's subsequent interest in a task only among those children who had also developed a

social-comparative sense of ability (Butler, 1989a, 1990). Competition also increased older, but not younger, children's tendency to engage in social

comparison (Butler, 1989a, 1989b). Second, although children of all ages engaged in social comparison, younger children seemed to be doing so more for task mastery reasons, whereas older children did so to assess their abilities (Butler, 1989b). Third, whereas 5-, 7-, and 10-year-old children's self-evaluations were equally accurate under mastery conditions, 5- and 7-

year-olds inflated their performance self-evaluations more than 10-year-olds under competitive conditions (Butler, 1990). Apparently, the influence of situationally induced performance goals on children's self-evaluations de-

pends on the children's age and cognitive sophistication. Finally, Butler and

Ruzany (1993) found that patterns of socialization influence both ability assessments and reasons for social comparison: Kibbutz-raised Israeli children adopted a normative ability concept at a younger age than city-reared Israeli children. However, only the urban children's reasons for engaging in social comparison were influenced by their concept of ability: Once they adopted a normative view, they used social comparison to compare their abilities with those of other children. In contrast, the kibbutz children used social comparison primarily for mastery reasons, regardless of their con-

ception of ability. Developmental studies of multiple goals are badly needed. We know very little

about how these kinds of multiple goals emerge during childhood and whether the relation of these different goals to performance varies across age and context.

In summary, researchers studying the development of children's motivation have found that motivation changes in important ways across the middle childhood and early adolescent years. Children's self-perceptions, interests, values, and goals become differentiated and established during this time. Particularly during middle childhood and early adolescence, children's beliefs and values tend to decline. Children's competence and efficacy beliefs become more closely tied to indicators of their performance. These changes are important to keep in mind as we review how social organizations of classrooms and group processes influence children's motivation; thus, we revisit some of these points in subsequent sections.




THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF CLASSROOMS AND STUDENTS' MOTIVATION

How do different social organizational structures in classrooms and instructional practices influence students' motivation? We focus in this section on relations between students and teachers and their impact on motivation, emphasizing the motivation constructs discussed in the earlier sections. We begin at the relatively broad level of overall classroom and school climate and their influence on motivation and then discuss more specific factors, with a special focus on classroom goal structure and ability grouping practices. We then move to more specific teaching practices and their influences on motivation. Our review does not capture all aspects of classroom organization and teacher practices; instead, we focus on the factors most often studied by motivation theorists. Interested readers also should see other reviews for further discussion of these issues, including Eccles et al. (1998), McCaslin and Good (1996), Maehr and Midgley (1996), Pintrich and Schunk (1996), and Wigfield, Eccles, and Pintrich (1996).

Classroom- and School-Level Factors

Classroom and School Climate and Student Motivation Researchers studying teacher influence on motivation initially focused on the

impact of teachers' personal characteristics and teaching style on children's overall achievement, motivation, satisfaction, and self-concept. Many investigators studied the association between teacher warmth/supportiveness and student motivation (particularly the value attached to working hard) and performance. However, because much of this early work was flawed methodologically, the results are difficult to interpret (see Dunkin & Biddle, 1974, for a review).

More recently, researchers studying classroom climate have separated factors such as teacher personality and warmth from teacher instruction and managerial style. They found that the effects of "climate" are dependent on other aspects of teachers' beliefs and practices. For instance, Moos and his colleagues have shown that student satisfaction, personal growth, and achievement are maximized only when teacher warmth and supportiveness are accompanied by efficient organization, stress on academics, and provision of focused, goal-oriented lessons (Fraser & Fisher, 1982; Moos, 1979; Trickett & Moos, 1974). Furthermore, these practices are more common among teachers who believe they can influence their students' performance and future achievement potential (Brookover, Beady, Flood, Schweitzer, & Wisenbaker, 1979; Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, & Ouston, 1979).

Recently, researchers have extended this general approach to the climate of the entire school. They found that schools vary in climate, teachers' sense of efficacy, and general expectations regarding student potential. Variations in these dimensions influence the motivation of both teachers and students in very fundamental ways (e.g., Maehr & Midgley, 1996; Rutter et al., 1979). The work of Maehr, Midgley, and their colleagues is a good example of this school organizational perspective (e.g., Maehr & Anderman, 1993; Maehr & Midgley, 1996). These investigators have focused primarily on some of the important motivation con-




structs we have discussed in this chapter, students' goal orientations and beliefs about ability. They suggest that school-level policies and practices (such as those

promoting ability tracking, comparative performance evaluations, retention, and

ego instead of mastery focus) undermine the motivation of both teachers and students through their impact on the goals these individuals bring to the learning environment (cf. Mac Iver, Reuman, & Main, 1995). These researchers have conducted extensive collaborative work to restructure elementary and middle schools to emphasize mastery- rather than ability-focused goals in order to foster the motivation of students.

Classroom Goal Structure, Cooperative Learning, and Student Motivation

Ames (1984) discussed how different goal structures used in the classroom affect students' self-evaluation and motivation. She focused on three different goal structures. Individualized structures occur when each student is judged on his or her own performance. In this structure, any student can succeed if he or she works hard. The performance of other students does not affect the evaluation of any given student. Competitive structures mean that some students are winners and others losers; that is the essence of competition. Ames noted that competition makes social

comparison and judgments of ability especially salient. Cooperative structures mean that group members share in rewards or punishments; the overall group's performance is key (although individuals often are accountable as well).

Ames (1984) discussed some of the motivational outcomes of these different structures; the structures influence in, particular, children's ability-related beliefs and goal orientations. In general, students focus more on self-evaluations of their

ability under competitive goal structures. Winners' ability beliefs are enhanced, and losers' are diminished. Overall, differences in self-perceptions of ability are

heightened under competitive conditions. With individualistic structures, students'

mastery goals are heightened; the main focus is on improving one's own skills.

Ability perceptions probably are less salient, because the focus is on effort and

improvement. There is little concern for others, however, because each individual determines his or her own achievement. Cooperative goal structures foster an

emphasis on shared effort and interdependence rather than ability. The social group becomes more the focus, and the group outcome is especially salient; thus, social

goals may be enhanced. Individuals' own ability perceptions become less crucial; rather, the group's performance is emphasized.

A major approach to instruction that uses cooperative goal structures is cooperative learning. Generally, cooperative learning involves students working together in groups rather than on their own or competing with others. There are a variety of types of cooperative learning; these are described by Kagan (1985), Slavin (1995), and Webb and Palincsar (1996). For instance, in "jigsaw" each student in a group is given part of the material that he or she needs to learn, and the student shares this material with the other members of the group. In "team games tournaments," students form into groups to learn material and then compete against other groups to earn points for their team.




There now is an extensive literature on cooperative learning's effects on children (for reviews, see Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 1994; Sharan & Sharan, 1992; Slavin, 1995, 1996). Researchers have found that cooperative learning has many positive effects. When teachers adopt a cooperative instructional and reward structure in their classrooms, achievement often improves, social relations are more positive, and students' motivation is enhanced (see Sharan & Shaulov, 1990). Both learning and motivation appear to be maximally facilitated in cooperative learning situations that are characterized by both group goals and individual accountability (Slavin, 1995). Such situations appear to create positive interdependence and stimulating group inquiry, which, in turn, arouse social and academic motivational goals and prevent the "free rider effect," or the problem of some children receiving good evaluations because their group does well, even if they did not contribute to the group (Stevens & Slavin, 1995).

Researchers have assessed how some of the different aspects of student motivation we have discussed are affected by cooperative learning. Students' liking of school and/or liking of different school subjects often has been assessed, and, as just mentioned, most studies of cooperative learning show that students' attitudes are more positive in classrooms in which cooperative learning is used extensively. Stevens and Slavin (1995) assessed students' beliefs about their ability in different subject areas along with their liking of the subjects. They found that students in cooperative elementary schools did have higher perceived ability in reading and math than students in "traditional" schools; however, there were no differences in students' liking of the different subjects between the two groups (Stevens and Slavin suggested that this may have been due to problems with their attitude measures). Overall, cooperative learning appears to have a positive impact on some of the motivational constructs we have been discussing.

Most of the research on cooperative learning has taken place in elementary schools. As we noted earlier, students' motivational characteristics change across the school years, and so it is important to assess how practices such as cooperative learning affect students of different ages. Recently, Nichols (1996, in press) assessed cooperative learning's effects on a number of the motivation constructs we are discussing in this chapter, including persistence, self-regulation, self-efficacy, intrinsic/extrinsic motivation, and goal orientation. Nichols has examined the effects of cooperative learning on these constructs in studies of high school students in mathematics classes. Students in the studies learned geometry either through cooperative learning techniques or through more traditional methods. Their motivation was measured via a questionnaire. Students in the cooperative learning groups (in comparison with those in more traditional instruction) showed more positive self-regulation and self-efficacy, higher intrinsic motivation, and a stronger focus on mastery goals, with the differences between groups often increasing over time. The students in cooperative learning also stated a stronger desire to please their teachers and their friends, providing further evidence for cooperative learning's positive effects on social outcomes.

Although cooperative learning appears to have many desirable outcomes, it does pose challenges for teachers. Structuring activities cooperatively requires exten-




sive planning, and record keeping can be challenging as well. There are questions concerning the kinds of subject areas for which cooperative learning is most effective.

Another important issue in cooperative learning is group composition. Slavin (1990) and other researchers generally recommend that groups be heterogeneous in terms of children's ability level as well as other characteristics such as race and gender. There is a growing body of research on how group composition influences student interaction in the group, and a major implication of this work is that group composition indeed has important influences on how groups operate (see Webb & Palincsar, 1996, for a review). Webb and Palincsar noted that children with middle levels of ability may be ignored in heterogeneous groups; high-ability children benefit by being leaders and teachers, and low-ability children benefit from the high-ability children's teaching. Furthermore, mixed-race groups can be dominated by White children, and mixed-sex groups can be dominated by boys. Thus, care must be taken in constructing groups, and teachers are advised to change groups frequently.

The reasons for the positive effects of cooperative learning on student motivation and achievement still are not completely understood. Slavin (1996) discussed different alternative models for the effects of cooperative learning: the motivational perspective, the social cohesion perspective, the developmental perspective, and the cognitive elaborative perspective. According to the motivational perspective, students, when working in groups, know that the only way they can reach their own goals is for the group to be successful. Therefore, they are motivated to help others in the group and work hard so that the group does succeed. Thus, cooperative learning creates a "group incentive" system in which individuals work together to achieve their own goals. Of course, this contrasts dramatically with competitive reward structures, in which one person's success means another's failure.

Slavin (1996) attempted to integrate the four perspectives into one model. He proposed that group goals facilitate students' own motivation to learn, as well as their motivation to encourage and help their groupmates to learn. This motivation will lead students to tutor one another, engage in peer modeling, and provide other cognitive elaborations. It also will lead to greater social cohesiveness in the group. Thus, in Slavin's model, motivation is the key, producing social, cognitive, and academic outcomes.

Ames (1992b) discussed how classroom grouping and other practices influence students' achievement goal orientations and other aspects of motivation (see Blumenfeld, 1992, for an expansion and critique of some of Ames's ideas). Ames, following Epstein (1988), focused on several aspects of motivation-classroom tasks, authority structure, recognition, grouping, evaluation, and time-and used the acronym TARGET to describe them. Each of these aspects can influence whether students develop a more task-involved or a more ego-oriented goal orientation. In describing these influences, we focus on practices that facilitate a task-involved goal orientation (or mastery goal orientation, to use Ames's term). Tasks that are diverse, interesting, and challenging foster students' task-involved goals, as do tasks students think they have a reasonable chance to complete. When the author-




ity in classrooms is structured such that students have opportunities to partici- pate in decision making and take responsibility for their own learning, students are more task involved. Recognition of students' effort (instead of recognition of only ability) and giving all students a chance to achieve recognition (rather than only the "best" students) foster task involved-goals. As discussed earlier, task-involved goals are fostered when cooperative grouping is used and students have opportunities to work with a heterogeneous mix of classmates. When teachers evaluate students' progress and mastery rather than only their outcomes and provide students opportunities to improve, task involvement is more likely. Fi- nally, time refers to how instruction is paced. Crucial elements for fostering task involvement are varying the amounts of time available for different students to complete their work and helping students learn to plan their own work schedule and organize how they progress through the work. Ames (1992a, 1992b) argued cogently that such practices will allow more students to remain positively motivated in the classroom, in that they will have more positive competence beliefs and task-involved goals (see also Stipek, 1996).

It should be clear from the work just reviewed that much progress has been made toward understanding how these different school and classroom features influence students' motivation. Yet, much more work is needed to understand how various instructional strategies interact with each other in a single context (e.g., the classroom) to affect motivation and learning (Ames, 1992b; Blumenfeld, 1992). Most teachers in American schools use a mix of mastery-oriented and performance-oriented strategies. For example, they may use mastery-oriented tasks and allow the students appropriate levels of autonomy but still rely primarily on social comparative evaluation strategies, and children often engage in social comparison and competition even in mastery-oriented classrooms (Crockenberg & Bryant, 1978). We know little about the best combination of these features to support a mastery-oriented motivational orientation. Nor do we know when, and if, the collection of motivational dimensions actually clusters together within the individual. More work is needed to determine how these motivational components interrelate with each other and with other motivational constructs to influence behavior. Of particular importance is the need to study the interaction of multiple goals as well as the contextual characteristics influencing the relative salience of various achievement, social, and moral goals in particular settings.

Students' own beliefs about effective instructional and motivational strategies need to be considered as well. Results of two studies are illustrative. Nolen and Nicholls (1993) found that students and teachers often had different views on the effectiveness of motivational practices; for instance, students thought extrinsic rewards were more effective, and praise less effective, than teachers did. Further- more, Thorkildsen, Nolen, and Fournier (1994) found that some children believed practices promoting meaningful learning were most fair, others favored practices emphasizing the importance of effort, and still others focused on practices involv- ing extrinsic reward. If students' ideas about appropriate motivational strategies do not mesh with teachers' ideas and practices, students' motivation might not be enhanced.




Ability Grouping Practices Students are grouped by ability in two main ways. In elementary schools,

children are often grouped by ability within classrooms for instruction in

subjects such as reading and math. In middle schools and high schools, between-classroom ability grouping, or tracking, is used more. These practices are controversial (e.g., Oakes, 1985) and have attracted much attention. Despite an extensive amount of research, however, few strong and definitive answers have emerged regarding their impact on motivation (see Fuligni, Eccles, & Barber, 1995; Gamoran & Mare, 1989; Kulik & Kulik, 1987; Slavin, 1990). The situation is complicated by the fact that there are conflicting hypotheses about the likely direction and the magnitude of the effects of ability grouping on motivation. The best justification for these practices derives from a person-environment fit perspective: People will be more motivated to learn if the material can be adapted to their current competence level. There is some evidence consistent with this perspective for students placed in high-ability classrooms, high within-class ability groups, and college tracks (Dreeben & Barr, 1988; Fuligni et al., 1995; Gamoran & Mare, 1989; Kulik & Kulik, 1987; Pallas, Entwisle, Alexander, & Stulka, 1994). The results for students placed in low-ability and noncollege tracks do not confirm this hypothesis. By and large, when long-term effects are found for this group of students, they are negative, primarily because these students are often provided with inferior educational experience and support (Dreeben & Barr, 1988; Pallas et al., 1994). Such results are consistent with a social stratification theoretical perspective. But it is important to note that these negative effects appear to result from the stereotypically biased imple- mentation of ability grouping programs. A different result might emerge for the low-competence students if the teachers implemented the program more in keeping with the goals inherent in the person-environment fit perspective, that is, by providing high-quality instruction and motivational practices tai- lored to the current competence level of the students.

One important concern about ability grouping is determining the relevant social comparison group for particular students. Ability grouping should narrow the range of possible social comparisons and thus lead to declines in the ability self-perceptions of higher ability individuals and increases in the ability self-perceptions of lower ability individuals. The few existing studies support this position. For example, Reuman, Mac Iver, Eccles, and Wigfield (1987) found that being placed in a low-ability math class in the seventh grade led to an increase in self-concept of math ability and a decrease in test anxiety; conversely, being placed in a high-ability math class led to a decrease in self-concept of math ability (see also Reuman, 1989). Similarly, Marsh, Chessor, Craven, and Roche (1995) found that being placed in a gifted and talented program led to a decline over time in students' academic self-concepts. It should be noted, however, that Pallas et al. (1994) found no evidence of within-class ability grouping in reading effects on ability self-concepts and performance expectations during the early elementary school years once the effect of ability group placement on




actual achievement level was controlled. However, if children compare across ability groups, then students in lower tracks should end up with less positive ability beliefs, and those in the higher tracks more positive ability beliefs.

Teacher Beliefs, Practices, and Support of Students

Teaching Practices Linked to Self-Evaluation and Motivation Rosenholtz and Simpson (1984) discussed a set of teaching practices that

affect motivation because they make ability differences in classroom especially salient to the students. These practices include whole group (vs. more individualized) instruction, ability grouping (vs. heterogeneous grouping), and public (vs. private) feedback. Rosenholtz et al. assumed that the first practice listed in each pair increases the salience of students' ability as crucial to success in the classroom and focuses students more on social comparisons with others. The practices also promote extrinsic motivators and ego-focused learning goals. All of these factors probably reduce children's motivation for learning, especially their beliefs about their competence. Such effects are particularly likely for low-performing children because, as these children become more aware of their relative low standing, they are likely to adopt a variety of ego-protective strategies that undermine learning and mastery (Covington, 1992). The little available research provides preliminary support for these hypotheses (e.g., Mac Iver, 1987; Rosenholtz & Rosenholtz, 1981). However, Stipek (1996) noted that these practices interact in complex ways that still are not fully understood.

It is obvious that grades and test scores influence students' self-evaluations by providing them with important information about their academic performance. However, it is not only the information itself but its form of presentation that is crucial. Public methods for charting progress, such as wall post- ers detailing amount or level of work completed, provide readily accessible information that students can use to compare themselves with one another (Rosenholtz & Rosenholtz, 1981). In addition, teachers who frequently contrast students' performances, grant privileges to "smart" children, or award prizes for "best" performance may increase the importance of ability as a factor in classroom life and heighten the negative affect associated with failure (see Ames, 1992b). When there are few clear winners and many losers, relative performance will be more salient to children, and thus social comparison will be emphasized (Nicholls, 1979b). In contrast, in mastery-oriented classrooms, everyone who performs adequately can experience success. As a result, youngsters in mastery-oriented rooms are more likely to focus on self-improvement than social comparison, to perceive themselves as able, and to have high expectations for success (Ames, 1992b). Finally, when variations in evaluations are either attributed to entity-based differences in competence or used as a controlling strategy rather than primarily for information on progress, intrinsic motivation is reduced (Kage & Namiki, 1990). Motivation researchers suggest that evaluation practices




focusing on students' mastery and improvement are better at fostering and maintaining motivation than are social normative, competitive, or controlling evaluation practices (see Ames, 1992b; Maehr & Midgley, 1996).

Teacher Control and Use of Rewards As discussed earlier, researchers such as Deci and Ryan (1985), Ryan and Stiller

(1991), and Connell and Wellborn (1991) have argued that intrinsic motivation- and, more particularly, internalization of the value of learning-leads to student engagement. Classroom contexts can greatly influence students' engagement; the degree of teacher versus student control is one crucial part of this. Deci, Ryan, Connell, and their colleagues have discussed how teachers who are overly controlling and do not provide an adequate amount of autonomy support undermine students' sense of autonomy, which can also undermine their intrinsic motivation and engagement. Support for this hypothesis has been found in both laboratory and field-based studies (e.g., Boggiano et al., 1992; Deci, Schwartz, Sheinman, & Ryan, 1981; Grolnick & Ryan, 1987; Ryan & Grolnick, 1986; see Ryan & Stiller, 1991, for a review).

Skinner and Belmont (1993) built on this work by looking at predictors of students' engagement, defined in both behavioral and emotional terms. The theoretical model for this study was Connell and Wellborn's (1991) model of engagement. As discussed earlier, Connell and Wellborn proposed that students have three fundamental needs (competence, autonomy, and relatedness) and that when context supports these needs, students will be engaged in the activities that they do. Skin- ner and Belmont measured teachers' and students' perceptions of teachers' provision of clear structure in the classroom, their support of autonomy, and their emotional involvement with students. They also measured teachers' and students' perceptions of students' behavioral and emotional engagement in the classroom. They found that students' behavioral engagement was predicted most strongly by teachers' ability to structure the classroom clearly. Student emotional engagement was predicted most by teachers' positive involvement with students. Furthermore, students' behavior influenced teachers' treatment of students across the school year; therefore, the effects must be thought of as reciprocal. The most crucial finding of the study for this chapter, however, concerns the impact of teachers' positive involvement with students on students' emotional engagement; the implication of this finding is that positive relations with teachers are crucial to motivation.

Other researchers also have looked at the impact of control and autonomy on student motivation and achievement. Turner (1995, 1997) studied how classroom contexts influence different aspects of young students' motivation for literacy activities. She distinguished between open and closed literacy activities. Open activities are ones that allow students choice, require strategy use, and facilitate student involvement and persistence. Because students choose the activities, they often are more interested in them. In contrast, closed activities are more constrained, both in terms of students' choices about whether and how to engage in them and in terms of the cognitive demands of the activity. Turner (1995) found that in classrooms where tasks are more open, students were more engaged in literacy activi-




ties, used more elaborate strategies, and were much more interested in literacy activities.

Au and her colleagues (Au, 1997; Au, Scheu, Kawakami, & Herman, 1990) discussed the importance of students' ownership of their activities as a crucial contributor to the development of literacy skills. Arguing that ownership is especially important for many minority students, they developed reading curricula in Hawaii to help foster the development of literacy skills, including ownership, in native Hawaiians, a group that traditionally has done poorly in school. The reading and writing activities in the Kamehameha Elementary Education Program (KEEP) curricula promote ownership by making the materials culturally relevant to the children. Evaluations of the program have shown that students are strongly engaged in the literacy activities and have a strong sense of ownership over the activities. Initially, improvement in the children's reading performance was not dramatic; in more recent evaluations, however, 80% of the students in the KEEP program were at or above grade level in reading.

One crucial point of debate relevant to the topic of control and autonomy is whether extrinsic rewards should be used by teachers to motivate students and, if they are used, how they should be administered. The use of rewards by teachers is a common practice in many schools; the rewards can be tangible (e.g., extra privileges) or verbal (e.g., praise). Yet, many motivation theorists, particularly theorists who believe intrinsic motivation has many positive effects on students' learning, have argued that, under certain conditions, the use of such rewards can undermine students' sense of control and autonomy over their achievement outcomes and reduce their intrinsic motivation (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 1985; Lepper, 1988; Ryan & Stiller, 1991). This is particularly true when students already possess intrinsic motivation for the activity in question; Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett (1973) used the compel- ling phrase "turning play into work" to describe such effects. In addition to the "turning play into work" issue, Ryan and Stiller discussed how extrinsic rewards can change students' perception of control from the sense that they control their own achievement outcomes to the sense that the teacher is controlling them. In Ryan and Stiller's view, this change undermines students' motivation to engage in the activity. These researchers thus have advocated careful and judicious use of extrinsic rewards in classroom settings.

Cameron and Pierce (1994) performed a meta-analysis of the research on the effects of rewards on intrinsic motivation and concluded that, in general, rewards do not undermine intrinsic motivation. They stated that the only time rewards appear to undermine intrinsic motivation is when expected tangible rewards are given to students. Ryan and Deci (1996), Kohn (1996), and Lepper, Keavney, and Drake (1996) all provided vigorous critiques of Cameron and Pierce's work, focusing on the way in which the meta-analysis was conducted (in particular, their focus on overall effects rather than on more particular conditions under which rewards affect intrinsic motivation) and the ways in which effects were included in the analysis. They further argued that Cameron and Pierce knew the answer they wanted to obtain from the meta-analysis before they began, which biased their approach to the analysis. In a response to their critics, Cameron and Pierce (1996) defended




their meta-analytic practices and did not change their conclusion that, overall, rewards do not undermine intrinsic motivation.

We cannot resolve this debate here, although we do believe that Cameron and Pierce's critics raised a number of important issues that the authors did not completely rebut in their reply. Most important is Cameron and Pierce's focus on the overall effects of reward rather than a more fine-grained consideration of the various conditions under which rewards may or may not undermine intrinsic motivation. As Lepper et al. (1996) and Ryan and Deci (1996) emphasized, focusing on overall effects is both simplistic and misleading. In this regard, it is important to note that Lepper et al. (1996) and Ryan and Deci (1996) stated that they are not completely opposed to the use of extrinsic rewards; there are conditions under which such rewards can foster student motivation. This debate has served the important function of moving away from the "overall effects" question to a closer consideration of when extrinsic rewards should and should not be used.

Social Support From Teachers Birch and Ladd (1996) discuss how teachers and peers can facilitate (or some-

times debilitate) children's early adjustment to school and school motivation. There appear to be several aspects of students' relations with teachers that are key: close- ness, dependency, and conflict. Close relations with teachers provide support to students and facilitate their school involvement. In contrast, dependency and conflict relate negatively to children's school motivation. When children are too dependent on teachers, they are less likely to adjust well to the classroom and, thus, are less positively motivated. Conflict with teachers is negatively related to both students' involvement in school and their regard for school (how much they like it).

Birch and Ladd (1996) focused on children's early adjustment to school, particularly relations with teachers during the primary grades. Other researchers have found that relations with teachers during middle school influence students' motivation. Goodenow (1993) found that students' perceptions of support from teachers and their sense of belongingness in their classrooms related strongly to their perceived valuing of the schoolwork they were doing. Similarly, Wentzel (in press) found that students' academic goals and performance were strongly related to their sense that their middle school teachers were "caring." This work provides further evidence of the important influence of positive teacher-student relations on student motivation.

SCHOOL TRANSITIONS AND CHANGES IN STUDENT MOTIVATION In the previous sections, we discussed some classroom practices that can facili-

tate or debilitate aspects of students' motivation. Anderman and Maehr (1994), Eccles and Midgley (1989), Eccles et al. (1998), Harter (1996), and Wigfield et al. (1996) discussed how many classroom and school environments move from practices that foster mastery goals and intrinsic motivation to practices that promote an ego goal orientation in students. Such practices also can contribute to the declines in students' academic competence beliefs, interest, and intrinsic motivation dis-




cussed earlier (see also Eccles, Wigfield, Midgley, et al., 1993). Many of these changes occur as children move from elementary to middle school and may be at least partially attributable to the larger size and structure of the middle school. We focus here on the particular changes in teacher-student relations and social organizations of classrooms and schools. Those most relevant to our discussion include changes in authority differential, the "personal" character of student-teacher relations, the organization of instruction, and the stability of peer networks.

First, as students move into middle school, they experience major changes in authority relationships. Middle school classrooms, as compared with elementary school classrooms, are characterized by a greater emphasis on teacher control and discipline and fewer opportunities for student decision making, choice, and self-management (e.g., Brophy & Evertson, 1976; Midgley & Feldlaufer, 1987; Moos, 1979).

Second, middle school classrooms, as compared with elementary school classrooms, often are characterized by less personal and positive teacher-student relationships (see Eccles & Midgley, 1989). For example, Trebilco, Atkinson, and Atkinson (1977) found that students reported less favorable interpersonal relations with their teachers after the transition to secondary school than before. Similarly, Feldlaufer, Midgley, and Eccles (1988) found that both students and observers rated junior high school math teachers as less friendly, less supportive, and less caring than the teachers the same students had 1 year earlier in the last year of elementary school. As discussed earlier, positive and emotionally warm relations with teachers relate to students' motivation and adjustment in the classroom.

Third, the shift to middle school is associated with systematic changes in the organization of instruction. In particular, students experience increases in practices such as whole-class task organization and between-classroom ability grouping (see Eccles & Midgley, 1989). As mentioned earlier, such changes are likely to increase social comparison, concerns about evaluation, and competitiveness, all of which could foster an ego goal orientation and a stronger focus on perceived competence (see Rosenholtz & Simpson, 1984). For children doing less well in school, such changes should lead to a decrease in their competence beliefs.

Finally, peer networks are disrupted when children change schools. Many times friends are separated from one another, and it takes some time for children to re- establish social networks. Wigfield et al. (1991) found that children's sense of social competence was lowest immediately after the transition to junior high school, in comparison with before the transition or later in junior high school. Such disrup- tions could influence children's academic motivation as well. Peers and motivation are considered in more detail in the next section.

In summary, after the transition to middle school, many aspects of the classroom and school organization seem to have negative effects, particularly on students' competence beliefs, achievement goals, and intrinsic motivation for learning. As mentioned earlier, Maehr and Midgley (1996) present a detailed account of an attempt to change the organization of a middle school using principles from achievement goal theory, the TARGET approach discussed by Ames (1992a, 1992b). Through collaborations with teachers and school administrators, many practices in




the school were changed in order to facilitate mastery rather than ability-focused goal orientations. Maehr and Midgley's account of the process of reorganizing the school is fascinating, and many positive results did occur as a consequence of the change. However, the researchers encountered many difficult issues throughout the process, including resistance to change, difficulties in adjusting the rigid middle school bell schedule, and parents' objections that their high-achieving students did not receive enough recognition. These difficulties illustrate the continuing challenges inherent in school reform efforts.

THE PEER GROUP AND STUDENTS' MOTIVATION In this discussion of social influences on motivation, we have focused primarily

on teacher-student relations and on characteristics of classroom organizations that influence students' motivation. Peers are another important social influence on motivation (see Webb & Palincsar, 1996, for a review of the research on group processes in the classroom). In this section, we focus on several crucial ways peers influence each other's learning and motivation.

Friendship and Motivation In Connell and Wellborn's (1991) model of motivation, relatedness is con-

sidered a major need. Relations with peers are an important way children can fulfill their need for relatedness. There has been much research focused on the relations among social competence, academic success, and motivation. Chil- dren are able to focus more of their attention on learning if they feel socially supported and well liked by both their peers and the adults in their learning context and if they feel that they belong (Goodenow, 1993; Ladd, 1990; Wentz-Gross, Siperstein, Untch, & Widaman, 1997). Researchers have found that children who are accepted by their peers and who have good social skills do better in school and have more positive motivation. Furthermore, social competence and social support can help ease school transitions, including the transition from home to school (Ladd, 1990). In contrast, socially rejected and highly aggressive children are at risk for poorer achievement and motivation (e.g., Asher & Coie, 1990; Ladd & Price, 1987; Parker & Asher, 1987; Wentzel, 1991b, 1993; for further discussion and review, see Berndt & Keefe, 1996; Birch & Ladd, 1996). Moreover, it appears that both the quantity of children's friendships with peers and the quality of the friendships are important; in fact, the quality of children's friendships may be especially key, particularly as children move into adolescence (see Berndt & Keefe, 1996). We should note that the major motivational constructs studied in this work are children's liking/disliking of school and school involvement/avoidance; thus, in certain respects, only limited aspects of motivation have been assessed by these researchers.

We discussed earlier research on teachers' relations with students and students' motivation. Birch and Ladd (1996) have encouraged researchers to examine the effects on motivation of different kinds of support teachers and peers provide children. They raised questions about the potential compensatory roles teachers




and peers might provide. Perhaps students with poor peer relations compensate by relating well with teachers; the converse also could be the case. Or perhaps each type of relationship is tied to a particular aspect of children's school adjustment and motivation. These interesting questions await future research.

Communities of Learners Another important aspect of the work on cooperative learning discussed ear-

lier is the role of peers as colearners. Doing learning activities in a social context is usually considered more "fun," and that perception alone may enhance students' motivation (Slavin, 1990; Stevens & Slavin, 1995). Peers can also help each other understand and learn the material through group discussion, sharing of resources, modeling academic skills, and interpreting and clarifying the tasks for each other (Schunk, 1987; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1997; Sieber, 1979). Each of these characteristics should influence achievement through its impact on children's expectations for success, their valuing of the activity, and their focus on learning rather than performance goals.

Other researchers also have noted the benefits of social interaction and collaboration for children's motivation and achievement. We focus on some illustrative work in the literacy field; other examples can be found in Oldfather and Dahl (1994) and Santa Barbara Discourse Group (1992). Turner (1995, 1997) noted that another benefit of open literacy tasks is that they allow opportunities for social collaboration. The social activities children engaged in took many forms, including modeling, peer tutoring, and discussion of the materials being read. The importance of these activities resided not just in the results students produced but in the processes of learning. Turner discussed the importance of the class working together to create a community of literacy learners rather than being either uncon- nected or competing individuals.

Guthrie and his colleagues (e.g., Guthrie et al., 1996; Guthrie & McCann, 1997) developed a reading instructional program, Concept Oriented Reading Instruction, designed to facilitate students' engagement in literacy and literacy skills. A crucial aspect of the program is collaboration with peers to facilitate students' skills and thematic understandings, along with their motivation. Thus, researchers increasingly are realizing how social collaboration can enhance students' motivation and performance.

Help Seeking From Peers One important focus of work on motivation that relates to the notion of commu-

nities of learners is students' help seeking. Nelson Le Gall and her colleagues (e.g., Nelson Le Gall & Glor-Sheib, 1985; Nelson Le Gall & Jones, 1990) and Newman and his colleagues (e.g., Newman, 1990, 1994; Newman & Goldin, 1990; Newman & Schwager, 1995) have developed models of children's help seeking; both groups stress the difference between appropriate and inappropriate help seeking. Appro- priate help seeking (labeled instrumental help seeking by Nelson Le Gall and adaptive help seeking by Newman) involves (a) deciding that one does not understand how to complete a problem after having tried to solve it on one's own, (b)




figuring out what and whom to ask, (c) developing a good question to obtain the needed help, and (d) processing the information received appropriately in order to complete the problem-solving task. Instrumental help seeking can foster motivation by keeping children engaged in an activity when they experience difficulties. Indeed, Newman has found that children are most likely to seek adaptive help when they are self-regulated, possess strong competence beliefs, and have mastery-oriented learning goals (see Newman, 1994).

It is important to note that, in general, children in elementary and secondary school do not frequently engage in help seeking either in classroom settings (Nelson Le Gall & Glor-Scheib, 1985) or when they are strongly encouraged to do so in a laboratory study (e.g., Newman & Schwager, 1995). This finding suggests that many children view help seeking as an admission that they cannot complete a problem on their own, an admission that is hard for them to make.

A number of factors influence children's willingness to seek help. These include both personal factors, such as children's motivation (e.g., competence beliefs, values, and goals) and affective reactions (e.g., Does help seeking cause embarrassment?), and contextual factors, such as classroom environment. Furthermore, there are some interesting individual and developmental differences in children's help seeking. For instance, Nelson Le Gall and DeCooke (1987) found that, among elementary- school-aged children, boys are more likely than girls to be asked for help (even though girls often perform better than boys in elementary school). Despite this overall difference, each sex prefers asking for help from same-sex peers. In a study of third-, fifth-, and seventh-grade children, Newman and Goldin (1990) found two interesting developmental differences in children's help seeking. At all ages, children who enjoyed challenge were more likely to seek help. In the two younger age groups, greater dependency related to help seeking; however, among the seventh graders, a greater focus on independent mastery related to help seeking. Further- more, the seventh graders were more sensitive to both the costs (looking stupid, being embarrassed) and the benefits of help seeking than were the younger children.

Equally important, if not more important, are the environmental factors. Chil- dren are more likely to seek help when teachers are warm and supportive and organize the instruction around learning or task goals rather than performance or ego goals, when they work in small groups rather than in whole-class situations, and when they work on certain kinds of tasks or activities (e.g., math) rather than other kinds of achievement tasks (see Newman, 1994, for a full review).

The studies of classroom goal structure and help seeking are particularly relevant to this chapter. Newman and Schwager (1995) gave third- and sixth- grade children math reasoning problems under either learning or performance goal conditions and examined the ways in which children asked for help. Children in the learning goal condition were more likely to ask if their answers were correct; Newman and Schwager interpreted this as a desire to receive corrective feedback about their performance. Sixth graders were less likely to seek help in the performance goals condition than in the learning goals condition, and they attempted to complete as many problems as pos-




sible as quickly as possible. In a somewhat similar study, Butler and Neuman (1995) assessed help seeking under learning (task focus, in their terminol- ogy) and performance (ego focus) conditions. They also assessed children's explanations for why they and other children do not seek help when it is needed. They found that second- and sixth-grade children were more likely to ask for help in the task condition than in the ego goal condition. The sixth graders in the ego goals condition were more likely than children in the other groups to say that another child would not ask for help to avoid looking stupid.

Ryan and Pintrich (1997) assessed early adolescents' perceptions of the benefits and threats of seeking help. They hypothesized that students with a positive sense of competence (both cognitive and social) and with task-focused achievement goals should be more likely to seek help, whereas those with a low sense of competence and performance goals should avoid help seeking. Moreover, they proposed that students' attitudes toward help seeking (seeing it as a threat or benefit) would mediate the relations just discussed. Using regression analyses, they found that perceived cognitive and social competence predicted negatively students' attitude that help seeking was threatening. Children with task-focused goals were more likely to see help seeking as beneficial, whereas those with relatively stronger performance goals saw it as a threat. Cognitive and social competence negatively predicted avoidance of help seeking, whereas children's task-focused goals directly and positively predicted adaptive help seeking. Furthermore, the attitudinal variables mediated some of the links among perceived competence, achievement goals, and help seeking. These results provide further evidence that students who perhaps need the most help (those with a lower sense of competence) are the ones least likely to engage in help seeking (see Ryan, Hicks, & Midgley, 1997, for further evidence regarding this point).

Peer Group Influences on Student Motivation Much of the early work on peer influences on school achievement focused on

the negative effects of peer groups on adolescents' commitment to doing well in school (e.g., Coleman, 1961). Investigators now have examined the specific mechanisms by which peer groups can have either a positive or negative effect on motivation across various activity settings. These researchers document that children join together in peer groups sharing similar motivational orientations and activity preferences and that such groupings reinforce and strengthen their existing motivational orientation and activity preferences over time (e.g., Berndt & Keefe, 1996; Berndt, Laychak, & Park, 1990; Kindermann, McCollam, & Gibson, 1996). Whether such effects are positive or negative depends on the nature of the peer groups' motivational orientation. High-achieving children who seek out other high achievers as friends develop even more positive academic motivation over time. By contrast, low achievers who join a low-achieving peer group should become even less motivated to do school work and more motivated to engage in other activities more consistent with their peer group's values (see Brown, 1990; Kindermann, 1993; Kindermann et al., 1996). Furthermore, the ways in which groups operate can either facilitate or debilitate motivation and achievement. Webb and Palincsar




(1996) discussed some of the difficulties that can occur in group learning (including the free rider effect discussed earlier) and the problem of certain children

dominating the group. Thus, the effects of groups on children's motivation are

complex and depend greatly on how the group is structured and the kinds of interactions that occur within the group.

Why are children influenced by their peers? Berndt and Keefe (1996) suggested several mechanisms to explain these influences. First, children want and need social approval, particularly from others whom they like. To gain social approval, they will do things their friends like. Whether this has positive or negative effects on motivation and achievement depends on who children's friends are. If they are high achievers, then the effects should be positive; if they are low achievers, problems could arise. Second, children often identify closely with their friends and, thus, act similarly to them; this is particularly likely during the early adolescent years. Third, children's friends provide important information about their own competence, and Berndt and Keefe made the intriguing suggestion that children often compete with their friends to enhance their own sense of self. For instance, high achievers may compete with one another for good grades. This competition may interfere with friendships if pushed too far, but it probably is a motivator for children.

The role of peer group influences is likely to vary across age. Peers may play an especially important role vis-a-vis motivation and achievement during adolescence for two reasons: Adolescents are more aware of, and concerned about, peer group acceptance and spend much more unsupervised time with peer groups than younger children. Consequently, adolescents should be especially vulnerable to peer group influences on their goals, interests, and values. In addition, however, the potential negative impact of peers may be especially problematic for some adolescents' academic achievement motivation. For example, early adolescents rate social activities as very important and as more enjoyable than most other activities, particularly academic activities (Eccles et al., 1989; Wigfield et al., 1991). Furthermore, early adolescents' physical appearance and social acceptance are more important predictors of their general self-esteem than their perceptions of their cognitive competence (Harter, 1990). Consequently, to the extent that one's peer group de- values academic achievement relative to other goals and activities, adolescents should shift their focus away from academic pursuits in order to maintain peer acceptance.

The work on the institutional consequences of ability grouping provides an example of these processes. Several researchers (e.g., Dreeben & Barr, 1988; Eder & Felmlee, 1984) have suggested that ability grouping influences motivation and achievement, in part, by its influence on one's peer group. The evidence of this effect is mixed for the elementary school years. But it is more likely to be true in the adolescent years, when between-class ability grouping and curricular tracking become more common. These institutional practices result in much greater segre- gation of peer groups based the courses they are taking (Fuligni et al., 1995; Rosenbaum, 1980; Vanfossen, Jones, & Spade, 1987). Consequently, we should expect greater evidence of social stratification effects of ability grouping on students' motivation during the high school years.




CONCLUSION In this chapter, we have discussed the nature of students' academic motivation

and its relation to important behavioral outcomes such as performance in different academic subjects, choices of which activities to pursue, effort exerted, and persistence. We noted that much of the work on students' motivation over the last 25 years has focused on a variety of student self-perceptions, along with students' interests, values, and goals, as crucial components of motivation. These constructs mediate students' performance, choices, and efforts. We also discussed the development of these different aspects of motivation, describing how students' motivation often declines during the school years and relates more closely to their actual performance.

We reviewed the large and growing body of research on how different school and classroom environmental factors influence students' motivation, and we discussed peer groups and motivation. Unfortunately, findings from many different studies suggest that the declines in motivation we discussed often can be traced to changes in the classroom environment and teaching practices; this seems to be particularly true as students move from elementary to middle school. On a more positive note, we also discussed a number of teaching practices and environmental conditions that can facilitate students' self-perceptions, values, interests, and goals. We also noted that peers often can have a positive influence on each other's motivation. We close this chapter with a discussion of some important issues remain- ing to be addressed in these different areas.

One issue concerns how the many different motivation constructs we discussed are influenced together by different social features of classrooms (see Stipek, 1996). We defined numerous aspects of students' motivation in the first section of the chapter. Yet, researchers assessing the ways in which different social factors in the school environment influence motivation often assess only certain of these aspects. For instance, researchers focus on students' goal orientations perhaps, or competence beliefs, but not a number of motivation constructs. Or they define and assess motivation in more general terms than those used in the literature on motivation; the research on cooperative learning's effects on motivation is one example of this. To obtain a more complete understanding of the influences of different social and environmental factors on motivation, one must assess motivation more fully.

We also must consider more closely how multiple aspects of motivation influence students' choices of different activities and their performance. This often has been done in studies within the academic domain (e.g., Meece et al., 1990; Pintrich & De Groot, 1990; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997). Also, there is growing interest in how different kinds of motivation, particularly social and academic motivation, influence students' performance (e.g., Juvonen & Wentzel, 1996; Wentzel & Wigfield, in press). Wentzel and Wigfield (in press) discuss how social and academic goals may interact to influence students' performance and how different classroom factors influence both social and academic goals. But the study of the joint influence of social and academic motivation on students' outcomes is just beginning, and much more work remains to be done in this important new research area. Crucial issues that researchers need to consider carefully are the degree to




which the constructs of social and academic motivation are similar or different and the interplay of these constructs in influencing students' outcomes (see Wentzel & Wigfield, in press, for further discussion).

Another crucial issue is how motivation should be conceptualized as theorists move to the view that learning is an inherently social activity. If learning truly is a social phenomenon and individuals cannot be separated from their social context, what is the role of self-perceptions in motivating students' behavior? Some might argue that they are irrelevant. Others believe that self-perceptions still are important, but perhaps in modified form (for further discussion, see Hickey, 1997; Marshall, 1992). Our point is that a truly social approach to learning may be in- compatible with the things that many motivation researchers study. This incompat- ibility encompasses different levels, from relevant constructs to ways of studying motivation.

We of course believe strongly that the motivation constructs we discussed, including those conceived of primarily as self-perceptions, have strong relevance to students' educational outcomes and so deserve continued conceptual and research attention. Yet, as social constructivist models become more prevalent, it is increasingly important to consider the influence of these models on ways of conceptualizing motivation. One issue is which constructs prevalent in social cognitive approaches to motivation are compatible with social constructivist approaches. Theorists have begun to discuss this issue. For instance, both Marshall (1992) and Blumenfeld (1992) focused on students' goal orientations as at least partly compatible with social constructivist views. But they also noted some limitations in prevalent views of goal orientations. Oldfather and Dahl (1994) discussed intrinsic motivation from a social constructivist perspective, conceptualizing it as the continuing impulse to learn. They defined this impulse as ongoing engagement in learning that comes from the learner's social construction of meaning and stated that it is characterized by learners' involvement, curiosity, and search for understanding. Their construct thus is similar to intrinsic motivation but clearly takes on a more social constructivist flavor.

Theorists are incorporating these constructs into models of motivation. For instance, Hickey (1997) presented what he called a principled, pragmatic model of motivation compatible with social constructivist views of learning. His model includes the beliefs and goals of individuals, socially defined constructs, and their interactions. McCaslin and Good (1996) developed a model of co-regulated learning that includes individuals' self-perceptions (such as self-efficacy and attributions for success and failure) and goals and the social/environmental characteristics of classrooms. They also noted that the reciprocal relations of learners' individual motives and characteristics of their social environments are crucial to co-regulated learning. While important steps, these models have not yet received much research attention.

Adopting the view that students' motivation is influenced strongly by their learning environment implies that motivation is situation specific (see Paris & Turner, 1994; Wigfield, 1997). Yet, there is interesting discussion in the field about this issue; in particular, there is discussion of how constructs may differ in their generality or




specificity. In his review of research on self-efficacy and competence beliefs, Pajares (1996) noted that self-efficacy usually is defined in very task-specific terms, whereas competence beliefs often are defined more generally. Wigfield and Guthrie (1997) present evidence for domain-specific reading motivation constructs. Students' interests probably are relatively specific. As we discussed earlier, however, students' goal orientations actually may generalize across different domains, such as academics and sports (Duda & Nicholls, 1992).

What now is needed is a clearer categorization of motivation constructs in terms of their generality and specificity. Such a categorization would lead to a better understanding of which constructs are more likely to be influenced by different environmental factors and social influences and which may be more stable across different environments. One example of this approach is Boekaerts's (1996) categorization system of different levels of situations, along with different levels of individuals' personality characteristics, and their relations to learning. The levels range from broad, general characteristics of both situations and individuals to very specific, unique aspects of both situations and people. This conceptualization al- lows for a clearer understanding of how characteristics of the person interact with characteristics of the situation to influence learning outcomes.

The methods used in research on motivation are another important concern. Hickey (1997) noted that self-report measures, a hallmark of social cognitive motivation research, may miss important contextual influences on motivation. Such measures also do not capture students' experiences as they are in the midst of an activity. There are other methodologies that can capture more fully these subjective experiences. Boekaerts and her colleagues (e.g., Boekaerts, 1997; Seegers & Boekaerts, 1993) developed an "on-line motivation" questionnaire that assesses students' motivation as they are doing different tasks. Seegers and Boekaerts found that "on-line" assessments were the strongest direct predictors of outcomes such as task performance and emotions. Csikszentmihalyi's experience sampling method- ology is another good example of a method for measuring individuals' experiences as they are taking place (see Csikszentmihalyi & Nakamura, 1989).

The study of the reciprocal relations of school and classroom environmental factors and student motivation also poses important methodological challenges. As Stipek (1996) pointed out, the interactive influence of different school and classroom factors on students' motivation has not been studied fully. Detailed ethno- graphic studies are one way to look at the complex interplay of classroom environmental factors and students' motivation (e.g., Oldfather & McLaughlin, 1993). Quantitative approaches can be used as well, and one particularly promising approach is hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992). With HLM, researchers can examine both individual differences in motivation and classroom effects on it. Anderman and Young (1994) used HLM to study students' goal orientations in science classrooms. They found individual differences in students' goal orientations but also effects of particular classroom practices on students' goal orientations. Uncovering these different influences on students' goal orientations, along with other aspects of motivation, is an important task for future research.




As we hope is clear from the research reviewed in this chapter, much has been learned about the nature of students' motivation and how it is influenced by the social learning environments students experience. The complexity of these relations, as well as their situation specificity, means that much work remains to be done in this area.

NOTE

'In contrast to these early studies using self-report measures, researchers using different methodologies (either asking different kinds of questions or observing young children's reactions to their performance on different tasks) have recently shown that not all young children are optimistic about their abilities. In Heyman, Dweck, and Cain's (1993) study, some preschool children already reacted negatively to failure, reporting that their failures mean that they are not good people. Similarly, in Stipek, Recchia, and McClintic (1992), preschool children as young as 2 years of age reacted both behaviorally and emotionally to failure experiences.

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Manuscript received August 15, 1997 Accepted December 24, 1997



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